10/11

i'm thankful that i didn't have to go to work yesterday and i don't have to go to work today and then it's the weekend so i don't have to go to work those days either. i'm thankful also that my last day at work before the long weekend was actually a good one, where i had my most fun recent development experience working on a new feature (thankful for react hooks) and got to have a fun pair session with my friend k, hopefully the first in a series. i'm thankful for days that make me feel hopeful about work and to imagine the possibility of a future where i'm excited at the beginning of every day.

i'm thankful that though miso woke me up at my usual time yesterday and today, instead of lying in bed waiting for d to wake up, i came out to the living room and had my breakfast (i'm thankful for dried sour cherries in steel cut oatmeal) and got in an early run on the treadmill. i'm thankful that though we had a series of difficulties with the treadmill's tracking and belt tightness, complicated by a confusing interface for modifying those things in which using a hex wrench to screw a bolt in a particular direction could have multiple effects unexplained in the manual 

i'm thankful that i am continuing to have the best treadmill runs i've ever had since i introduced playing switch to the equation. i'm thankful for tetris and mario kart, which have been my two go-to treadmill games lately, and i'm thankful that s had the idea to get a cheap projector so d and i could project our screens against the basement wall while we go. i'm thankful for podcasts i listen to while i run and play, especially (despite my hatred of numbers) the 538 politics podcast (https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/politics-podcast/), which is my current favorite podcast, mostly because i like clare malone a lot and the interplay of the hosts is good.

i'm thankful that yesterday we bought delicious sandwiches (one with italian cured meats and one meatball parm) to go and went to a park in the north near a huge bridge and ate them at a picnic table with miso. i'm thankful we walked across the huge bridge, even though in retrospect i would probably prefer not to walk across a huge bridge with a twitchy dog, and i'm thankful for miso's excitement at walking up a steep ridge trail. i'm thankful for the solidity of pleasant tiredness in legs after a good amount of running and hiking. i'm thankful to have ordered popeye's delivery as a surprise for dinner.

i'm so thankful we moved to portland and i'm thankful for how hard d pushed for us to move, against my fear and resistance at the time, because i think that if i had my way, i probably would have let inertia take the wheel as i always do and would have stayed in bloomington forever and wouldn't have experienced how much nicer our lives would be here, full of new places to go and good restaurants and full of friends. i'm thankful that at least a couple of times a week, i am struck, in the midst of my usual mental mumble, by the thought "i am so glad we moved here." i'm thankful that i feel like a newer/better version of myself than the version i was just a few months ago, more open to experiences than i used to be. i'm thankful that kh is having a party tonight to celebrate her new job, even though i'm sad i won't get to work with her anymore. 

i'm thankful for trust exercise by susan choi, which gives me great barry vibes, even thought i'm reading it slowly because it can be so intense that sometimes i have to put it down. i'm thankful for will and testament, which i finished since the last time i wrote to you and which is the best novel i've read in some time. i'm thankful for the most recent season of peaky blinders, where the use of "war pigs" as the soundtrack to an inevitable slow motion montage of people walking toughly led to the realization that peaky blinders is like "what if a sabbath riff was also a TV show," which is an aesthetic i'm into, especially when the plot of the season is about tricking and then killing fascists. i'm thankful we started a rewatch of the good place yesterday. i'm thankful for the movie first man, which was overly long but had some fun rumbly shaky-cam setpieces that made me think of "what if friday night lights but NASA in the 60s." 

i'm thankful to be listening to the new big thief album on headphones as i sit in our front room in my bathrobe and covered with another blanket. i'm thankful to have decided on my lazy halloween costume thanks to a tip from ew, which is that i'm going to go as self care and wear a robe and slippers and a korean face mask. i'm thankful that i have cut out a lot of the expensive supplements i used to take and have not really experienced any problems because of that, in some ways i actually feel better. i'm thankful to keep taking ones that i think are good for me somehow. i'm thankful to have written this, which feels like its own kind of supplement and is free.